build upgrade help

[FlyingCake]

Hello, later this year i am going to be travelling to europe where prices of pc hardware are considerably cheaper than where i live, so i was planning on upgrading my pc, if necessary.

My current specs are:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1600 3.2GHz 6-Core Processor ($188.90 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: MSI - B350M GAMING PRO Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($64.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Crucial - Ballistix Sport LT 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($87.89 @ OutletPC)
Storage: SanDisk - SSD PLUS 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($59.87 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital - Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($46.49 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA - GeForce GTX 1070 Ti 8GB SC GAMING ACX 3.0 Black Edition Video Card ($879.99 @ Newegg Marketplace)
Case: Cougar - MX500 ATX Mid Tower Case ($54.98 @ Newegg Marketplace)
Power Supply: EVGA - 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($48.89 @ OutletPC)
Total: $1432.00
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-02-21 11:38 EST-0500

the only component i was thinking of upgrading atm was a higher capacity ssd and my ryzen 5 1600 for an i7 8700k, but not sure if the gaming performance jump is high.

Main games i play are csgo, r6 siege, pubg, fortnite, ow, gta v and league atm but im starting to play AAA games.

i use my pc only for gaming on 1080p and 144hz when possible, and dont have any plans of upgrading to 1440p any time soon, at least until i upgrade my gpu which wont happen for a long time.

my budget is around 1k USD

 

[larkspur]

Yeah you should go for a 240gb SSD or larger - you'll thank yourself later. Also get a better PSU. All those nice components shouldn't be running on a cheap PSU. Seasonic FOCUS series is great for the money.

When using a 144hz monitor you should go with an i5-8600k or i7-8700k (assuming you are amenable to overclocking otherwise the non-k versions will be fine). The coffee lake CPUs get higher FPS when paired with a suitable GPU when using a high refresh-rate monitor. If you were using a 60hz monitor then using a Ryzen wouldn't be an issue, but especially with that list of games and that refresh rate, I'd go coffee lake for max FPS.

Also, make sure to buy a RAM kit with 2 sticks of RAM. 2 sticks means dual-channel. 1 stick is only single channel. It makes a difference. 16gb of ram (2x8gb) should last you for a very long time gaming-wise. 8gb (2x4gb) is considered the minimum for new gaming systems.

Also Ryzen refresh CPUs (Zen+) will be out soon. These will have higher stock clocks and should overclock higher than current-gen Ryzens. Something to consider anyway...

 

[feelinfroggy777]

I would not move from a 1600 to the 8700k. The 8700k is a great CPU for gaming, but you will need to upgrade the motherboard also and you wont get great performance per dollar. You should pay close attention to the Ryzen 2 launch that will happen in April. You will be able to drop the 2600 or equivalent into your current mobo. Hopefully AMD will improve on single threaded performance and will get pretty close to the 8700k.

You should get more RAM, but also faster RAM. Ryzen scales very well with fast RAM, so I would get a 16gb kit of 3200mhz speed RAM. Make sure the RAM is listed on your motherboard's QVL as Ryzen still has a lot of RAM compatibility issues. You will see a big jump by getting a kit of RAM because you have a dual channel board and you are only running one stick of RAM, so you board is running at single channel speed. Like I said, Ryzen scales well with RAM , so you are leaving some performance on the table.

 

[larkspur]

Hopefully AMD will improve on single threaded performance and will get pretty close to the 8700k.

I believe the April release is just a process improvement (Zen+), not an architectural advance (Zen 2). Zen 2 is expected to come out in 2019. As such I doubt we'll see an IPC improvement over current Ryzens, but we'll see. I do agree though that the higher clocked Ryzen+ CPUs are worth waiting for to see just how much higher they can clock - this should make them more competitive at higher refresh rates. And the OP wouldn't need a new motherboard. Once those come out I'd re-evaluate the options.

 

[feelinfroggy777]

Zen+/Zen2, I was just referring to the next Ryzen product launch. The rest is just marketing speak. Higher clocks should help out a lot if AMD can break the 4.2 barrier with Ryzen.